Opportunity Progression

What is it?

When you have a person who could be a customer we call them a ‘Lead’. The process of getting a lead to the point that they buy something from you is Opportunity Progression.

This is an important process because not all leads will end up buying and you need to have an idea of which are most likely to become customers so you can spend your time wisely.

Who should do it?

Opportunity Progression is part of our Startup and Growth business blueprints

When should I do it?

Whenever you start to have leads you should use this process

How often should I do it?

Each week you should be looking at your leads and considering the next steps for each. Taking action to get them to the next step is the progression we’re looking for here.

How do I do it?

Identify your opportunity stages

People rarely go from being a lead to buying in one jump, there are steps along the way. We call these the opportunity stages. You’ll want to adapt these for your business and it’s likely that they will change and mature over time but a good starting point is to have three stages.

  1. Early Stage Opportunity. When you’re getting to know your lead and finding out more about them and how you might work with them.

  2. Mid-Stage Opportunity. As you develop a sense for how you work together, meet more people from the client, and get to know how they will buy from you.

  3. Late Stage Opportunity. When you’re preparing to work together, submitting a bid, drafting contracts, deciding on dates.

  4. Won or Lost.

Set the criteria for each stage

You need to have a robust criteria for how each opportunity will pass from one stage to the next. The temptation is often to be over confident about how likely it is that someone one buy from you so we need to give ourselves some rules. The list below comes from an established sales framework called MEDDICC. You can use these or research another one online (there are plenty) a simpler and very common alternative is BANT.

  • Early Stage Qualification Criteria

    • Is there a problem for you to solve? Can you find a pain point in the organisation that your product or service will remove?

    • Do you have a supporter? Is there someone in the organisation that you can work with through this process?

    • Can they buy it? Do you know who will make the decision to buy?

  • Mid Stage Qualification Criteria

    • Have you demonstrated the value of your product or solution?

    • Has your demonstration been understood to remove the pain points for the customer?

    • Do you know how they will make a decision to buy from you, from someone else, or even not to buy?

    • Are you supported internally? Do the people you talk to promote you when you’re not there?

  • Late Stage Qualification Criteria

    • Is the value of buying from you understood by everyone who needs to sign off on it?

    • Do you know the steps that it takes to go from your proposal to a signed contract?

    • Are the dates of each of those steps understood and agreed by you and the customer?

Moving from one stage to the next

Once you know the stages and what it takes to get to them you need to plan how to get from one stage to the next. In some cases you might have a really great relationship with your lead and you might be able to ask really direct questions like ‘Who holds the budget and can sign off on you working with me?’ but in most cases this won’t be true.

The following list are the most common ways that you can get from one stage to the next:

  • From Lead to Early Stage

    • Informal conversations. You keep talking to your lead and follow on from where you started with them (assuming you followed the steps in our Prospecting section)

    • Requesting a face to face meeting rather than email, text or zoom. This shows that you want to have a more detailed conversation and is a commitment from your customer to spend time with you undistracted..

    • Ask about their business challenges. By asking open questions about the problems they face you can find out if your solution is likely to fit.

    • Ask if they have tried other solutions in the past. This will show you how much they value solving the problem and also how they go about buying in their business

  • From Early Stage to Mid Stage

    • Request and run a discovery workshop. These are normally a couple of hours up to half a day and include a small team from your client and you business. You can ask specific questions about the problem that align with the solution you can offer.

    • Offer a free assessment. You can provide a report that shows how they should evaluate your product and will let you ask questions about how they will make a decision and if they are considering other options.

    • Request to be introduced to the customer team. Open ended questions such as ‘Who else should I be talking too if we’re going to work together?’ will help you expand your influence in the customer and also understand the process of deciding and buying,

  • From Mid Stage to Late Stage

    • Ask how, and to who, you should submit your bid. As you prepare your bid you can do this collaboratively with your customer, especially those you now know well, and ask them if the bid looks like it is complete to them.

    • Request a start data. It’s OK to ask when they would like you to start work as you need to prepare and so does your customer. If you can set a timeline then you can use this in your bid and start to drive the sequence of events needed get a signed contract and start work.

    • Ask for a kick off meeting. Getting the whole team (supplier and customer) together is a great way to set the expectation that you’ll be starting soon and also to confirm that you have everyone onboard for the project

When you move methodically from one stage to the next you reduce the chances of issues coming out of the woodwork later on in the process. The most common reasons for loosing work can be minimised by following the steps above.